As we analysed for April’s Total Football Analysis magazine special, some of Europe’s top sides this season, such as newly crowned Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen, Primeira Liga table-toppers Sporting CP and Serie A leaders Inter have dominated their respective divisions thanks in no small part to each of their intelligent tactical deployment of wing-backs in 2023/24.
The intelligent use of wing-backs is not exclusive to those three sides within Europe or, indeed, in all of world football, however. Another side that have demonstrated the ability to make some gains on their opponents through the effective utilisation of wing-backs so far in the early stages of their 2024 season is Progreso in the Uruguayan Primera División.
Earning promotion from the second tier last season under the tutelage of Carlos Canobbio, Progreso currently sit second eight games into the 2024 league campaign, with their 42-year-old coach’s use of wing-backs playing a vital role in their stunning start to the season.
This tactical analysis piece will provide some analysis of how Canobbio’s wing-backs have been so important to the team’s attacking tactics and success thus far in 2024.
Ball progression
Our tactical analysis will break the role of Progreso’s wing-backs down into different phases of the team’s in-possession play, beginning with the ball progression phase in this section of our analysis.
To kick off this piece, it’s worth noting that Canobbio has primarily set his team up in a 3-4-1-2 shape this term, though he hasn’t exclusively lined them up with three centre-backs, with the 4-2-3-1 also being deployed at times.
Even more than the centre-backs, Progreso’s wing-backs have been the team’s primary outlet for progressive passes during the 2024 campaign thus far; El Gaucho del Pantanoso’s progressive pass map for the current season to date is shown in figure 1, which emphasises the team’s trend of playing the ball out to the wing as they enter the opposition’s half and final third before the wing-backs drive the team forward towards the opposition’s penalty area.
Both sides of the pitch are frequently used by Canobbio’s team in this way, a fairly equal amount.
Our next image displays how we could expect to see Progreso shaping up in the ball progression phase, with a base line of three at the back behind a central midfielder who will drop to become the deeper of the two, typically.
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